Dictionaries

News about Dictionaries, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Chronology of Coverage

Sep. 4, 2014

Kit Eaton App Smart column examines several applications that will be useful to students who are returning to school, including dictionaries, cloud services and apps that emulate graphing calculators. MORE

Jan. 22, 2014

Oxford English Dictionary, now under leadership of Michael Proffitt, is looking to serve traditionalists and new users alike; Proffitt assumes responsibility of retaining vaunted traditions while ensuring relevance in era of Googled definitions and text talk. MORE

Jan. 4, 2014

Urban Dictionary is increasingly becoming real-time archive for new and slang terms, particularly those that have risen because of web and social media; crowdsourced online dictionary allows anyone to contribute words and definitions, making it anthropologist of Internet, taking pulse of society and capturing cultural moments in real time. MORE

Jul. 18, 2013

May. 21, 2013

Lawyers and judges are increasingly turning to Urban Dictionary, crowdsourced collection of slang words on Internet; site has found itself in thick of cases involving everything from sexual harassment to armed robbery to requests for personalized license plates, as courts look to discern meaning and intent in modern lexicon. MORE

Apr. 25, 2013

Dec. 3, 2012

Op-Ed article by Ben Zimmer analyzes tendency among news outlets to look for scandals among lexicographers; cites outrage inspired by erroneous report that Oxford English Dictionary had deleted thousands of words due to their foreign origins. MORE

Nov. 29, 2012

Linguist Sarah Ogilvie stirs controversy with her forthcoming book Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary, which appears to suggest that former editor Robert Burchfield surreptitiously expunged hundreds of words with foreign origins from the OED. MORE

Sep. 18, 2012

Scholars at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute have published an online dictionary of Demotic Egyptian, the language used by common Egyptians for at least 1,000 years, from 500 BC to AD 500; 2,000-page dictionary represents almost 40 years of research and provides a counterpoint to the knowledge gained by the study of hieroglyphics, which were used by the pharaohs. MORE

Feb. 25, 2012

Compilers of the Dictionary of American Regional English have published the work’s fifth and final volume after 50 years of ambitious lexicographical research that uncovered nearly 60,000 entries. MORE

Feb. 25, 2012

Selection of terms from Volume V of the Dictionary of American Regional English given. MORE

Jan. 1, 2012

Anne Eisenberg Novelties column highlights the online dictionary Wordnik; dictionary shows users searching for words the information it finds on the Web, with no editorial tinkering; Wordnik processes a vast reservoir of language, keeping tabs on more than six million words automatically. MORE

Dec. 9, 2011

American Heritage Dictionary decides to reword its definition of 'anchor baby' in its fifth online edition after its inclusion sparked an outcry from immigrants' advocacy group the Immigration Policy Center, that says the term is derogatory. MORE

Nov. 1, 2011

Stuart Elliott Advertising column; fifth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, will be marketed in variety of traditional and new ways as executives adapt to changing needs of users but still feel there is value in the printed version of the reference tool. MORE

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September 4, 2014, Thursday

The revised edition of the Standard Dictionary of Modern Chinese has just been released, and with it, more than 100 new terms — many slang or online neologisms — have been granted admission into the august realm of official Chinese lexicons.